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New Scientist Live

US ‘revises data’ on Soviet chemical arms

A POTENTIALLY embarrassing split has opened up between the defence communities
of the US and Britain over their respective assessments of the current size
of the Soviet stockpile of chemical weapons.

The issue is politically sensitive because of the fact that the US and
the USSR this week begin exchanging information on their two chemical weapons
programmes. Such a data exchange was part of the bilateral agreement reached
between US Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard
Shevardnadze in Wyoming in September.

The split also occurs at a time of growing unease in the international
community over the US’s current attitude towards negotiations in Geneva
on a treaty banning all chemical weapons. Some diplomats see a contradiction
between President Bush’s commitment to a speedy conclusion of these negotiations,
and his administration’s apparent desire to seek the continued production
of chemical weapons, even after a treaty comes into effect.

The apparent disagreement between the US and Britain over the size of
the Soviet stockpile adds a further twist to a lengthy debate in the West
about the reliability of Soviet information about their chemical weapons
capabilities.

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Although neither Western country claims precise official figures, some
administration officials in the US were publicly claiming up to a few months
ago that the USSR currently holds about 300 000 tonnes of such weapons.
This figure, which is still used in Britain as the basis of official statements
on chemical weapons, is virtually an order of magnitude greater than the
50 000 tonnes which the USSR has officially admitted.

In recent weeks, officials from the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington
– the body responsible for providing the Department of Defense with the
data on which its policy decisions are based – has been quoted in the Washington
press as saying that the Soviet Union may only possess as few as 75 000
tonnes.

The British government, however, is standing firm by earlier estimates,
claiming that the USSR has so far provided no firm data which would make
it appropriate for these figures to be revised downwards.

Peter Davies, the head of the Foreign Office’s Arms Control and Disarmament
Department, last week dismissed reports of new US estimates as being ‘unconfirmed’.
He pointed out that the US government, when asked to comment, had said that
there had been no official change in its position: Davies said there was
therefore ‘no significant divergence’ between Britain and the US on this
issue.

Others, however, claim that the apparently contradictory figures now
being used in official circles in the two Western capitals are becoming
something of an embarrassment. ‘We (in Britain) have an intelligence community
which is locked into its estimates,’ says Julian Perry Robinson, a chemical
weapons analyst with the Science Policy Research Unit at the University
of Sussex. ‘The real answers are going to emerge shortly. At that point,
some people are going to claim that what (the USSR) is saying is a lie.
I do not know how the British are going to get off this hook. It is a real
problem.’

Meanwhile, Washington’s decision to maintain development of binary chemical
weapons has led to fears that the US may seek the right to continue the
productionof chemical weapons, under the guise of ‘modernisation’, even
after an international treaty – which is currently under negotiation in
Geneva – comes into effect.

Speaking in a personal capacity last month at Harvard University, Johan
Molander, the deputy head of the Swedish delegation to the Geneva negotiations,
said that a treaty allowing such production ‘is not presently being negotiated
in Geneva, and would never have any chance of being negotiated there’.